On May 7, local time, the 8th President of Russia Vladimir Putin held an inauguration ceremony, starting his six-year journey to take charge of Russia again.
Earlier, Putin said at an event of the Union of Russian Industrialists and Entrepreneurs that he planned to visit China in May. This is his first foreign trip since his re-election.
Putin
The president visited abroad, and the foreign minister fought the "front war".
On April 8, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited China. This coincided with US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's visit to China. The old lady gave China two "ultimatums", one is China's "overcapacity" of electric vehicles, lithium batteries and photovoltaics, and the other is that China cannot "aid Russia", especially not to support Russia's defense and industrial base. She threatened "huge consequences" if she did so.
Since December last year, the European Union and the United States have repeatedly claimed that Chinese companies provide Russia with "raw materials and components for military purposes", and 13 Chinese companies have been included in the 12th round of sanctions against Russia for the first time. In February this year, the United States included some Chinese companies in the sanctions list and imposed export restrictions on the grounds of "helping Russia circumvent sanctions".
Blinken
Then, on April 24, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited China. Before coming to China, at the G7 foreign ministers' summit, he unceremoniously accused China of not being able to maintain positive and friendly relations with Europe at the same time, while supporting Russia, which poses a threat to European security. During his visit, he threatened China with measures if it continued to support Russia. These measures could include sanctions against Chinese companies and the exclusion of Chinese banks from the SWIFT system.
Then, on May 1, the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions against 300 entities and individuals, including 20 Chinese entities. U.S. Ambassador to China Burns said that "these companies have provided critical technologies to Russia's defense industrial base."
The United States is forcing China to "choose sides".
Russia also wants China to "choose sides". The main purpose of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's visit to China is to promote the establishment of an alliance between China and Russia in response to the US-led NATO. Lavrov said that the Euro-Atlantic security system dominated by the United States has long placed itself above the international multilateral system, and it is precisely because of this that China and Russia have the need to build a Eurasian security mission.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
The meaning of this statement is clear: it is necessary for China and Russia to form a "security alliance." The Chinese side politely rejected Russia's demand.
In response, the Chinese side said that since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Russia 75 years ago, the relations between the two countries have gone through ups and downs and forged ahead, and on the basis of "non-alignment, non-confrontation and non-targeting of any third party", the two sides have adhered to permanent good-neighborliness and friendship, deepened all-out war cooperation, and created a new paradigm of major powers that is completely different from the Cold War period. At the same time, China attaches great importance to China-Russia relations and is willing to maintain close bilateral communication with the Russian side and show more responsibility.
"Non-alignment, non-confrontation, and non-targeting of any third party" is the "fixed star" of our handling of Sino-Russian relations.
However, some domestic experts and "Russian fans" have made a big noise about this, and their main argument is: Russia is rushing to the front line to "block arrows" for China, and if Russia falls, the United States will free up its hands and go all out to "clean up" China; if Russia is "half-hearted" and "half-pushed" to help us at that time, what should we do? Some bluntly say that the United States and Europe can form an alliance to build NATO, why can't China and Russia form an alliance to oppose hegemony?
Objectively speaking, this kind of argument sounds very reasonable and has a lot of public opinion, but it does not conform to the mainland's development interests and diplomatic principles. "Non-alignment" is the "superior strategy" that is most in line with China's national conditions at present, and we will not easily break with any country to "flip the table", this is not "cowardice", but "conspiracy".
Maritime trade
Economically speaking, China's annual trade surplus with the United States and the West is as high as 800 billion yuan, which is the confidence for us to fight a financial war with the United States. Without sufficient foreign exchange reserves, we will be at the mercy of the United States, as Thailand, Malaysia, and South Korea did in 1997, not to mention the internationalization of the renminbi? Not to mention the great cause of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
There are always some Chinese people who advocate that China, like Russia, collide with the United States and the West, dare to strike first in case of trouble, and have the courage to break the kettle. But that impulse is not good for China, and unlike Russia, which is the most self-sufficient in the world, we are a highly open economy, the largest trading goods country. We need to use global resources and rely on global markets.
The competition between China and the United States is at the "dawn" moment, time is on my side, as long as we can afford to wait and survive, the dawn is just around the corner. What we need most at this time is strategic focus.
Kremlin
We must help Russia, and we will help it wholeheartedly, and we cannot hesitate or stop because of US intimidation and threats. As the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, on the basis of equality and mutual benefit, China's right to conduct normal economic and trade exchanges with other countries, including Russia, cannot be interfered with or undermined, and China's legitimate rights and interests cannot be infringed upon. China firmly opposes the fact that the US has introduced a bill on large-scale aid to Ukraine while making groundless accusations against normal economic and trade exchanges between China and Russia.
Under pressure from the United States and 27 Western countries, China has carried out normal trade with Russia. Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them. I believe that Russian friends will definitely feel the same way, otherwise President Putin would not have visited Beijing for the first time after being re-elected.
However, "good brothers do not necessarily worship their sons", China can help Russia as much as it wants, and it does not necessarily have to form a "security alliance", which is to make a "face" for outsiders to see, and to help in a down-to-earth manner, this is the "inside". This point should also be made clear to our Russian friends.
This is Eastern wisdom.
As for the US sanctions against China and even military intervention in China's peripheral affairs, to be honest, China is not afraid. In the last century, when China was "poor and white" just after the founding of the People's Republic of China, China "did not fear ghosts and did not believe in evil" and dared to compete with the United Nations forces of 16 countries headed by the United States on the Korean battlefield; now, China's economy has developed into the world's second most powerful country, and its military strength can crush all powerful enemies at the "doorstep" of the Asia-Pacific region, and the United States, which does not even dare to end up in Ukraine and the Middle East, dares to fight a bloody war with China to the end?
China has become a manufacturing powerhouse
In addition to institutional superiority, military strength, and economic foundation, we also have strong manufacturing capabilities. Because modern warfare is a war of industrial attrition.
According to OECD statistics, China's total manufacturing output will account for 35% of the world's total output in 2023, which is more than the sum of the second to tenth places combined. China has the most complete industrial system in the world, including 41 major industrial categories, 207 medium categories, and 666 sub-categories, and more than 40% of the 500 major industrial products rank first in the world in terms of product output. In terms of shipbuilding capacity, China's shipbuilding capacity is 232 times that of the United States, and the number of warships launched each year is three times that of the United States.
China helps Russia, and there is also a "return" factor.
In the last century, when the Soviet Union came to China's aid, it sent 20,000 high-level experts to China with nearly 100 tons of mechanical drawings. In order to establish China's own air force school, the Soviet Union sent a full set of personnel, from the principal to the ground crew, with a total of 878 top specialists. Even the production lines of jet aircraft and main battle tanks in service were brought to China, and even the full set of patents for the Tu-16 bomber, the MiG-21 fighter and the An-12 transport aircraft were transferred to China. These "three major pieces" were the world's top strategic products at that time. The most exaggerated thing is that even half of the nuclear engineering illustrations were given to China.
Soviet aid to China
In order to help China build an industrial system that is not subject to international sanctions, Soviet experts focused on guiding China's basic industries, such as electric power, iron and steel, shipbuilding, and more than 140 fields. At that time, there were less than 1,000 people in the country who knew chemistry, and more than 2,400 Soviet experts came to China in 1952 to teach chemistry. Some people say that without the complete set of aid from the Soviet Union back then, China's basic industry might have been 50 years later, equivalent to India's current time.
Today, China has become the world's largest industrial power. Our normal trade exchanges with Russia, including industrial equipment and technology, are not only our sovereign rights, but also a friendly return to the Soviet Union's aid to China at that time.